* Posts by Jamie Jones

4281 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2007

Y'know what? VoIP can also be free from pesky regulation – US judges

Jamie Jones Silver badge

I'm not experienced in such matters, but from what I see, you both make sense.

The problem is, though, that with the lack of net neutrality, companies can now do what the hell they like, such as hobbling access to save their phone service, or - as in the article - push customers to their own VoIP service.

That stinks.

I've seen the future of consumer AI, and it doesn't have one

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: An "AI powered cooking assistant"?

The nearest I ever come to a recpie is reading the cooking time guide on the box...

Strewth! Aussie ISP gets eye-watering IPv4 bill, shifts to IPv6 addresses

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Finally?

Yep. talk-talks network is sound.

Indeed, I use talktalk.FTTC as a consumer, and have never had an issue - 7.7ms ping first external hop, and always 8Mb/s. It's BT to the exchange anyway.

Their customer service may be crap, but there's a lot of snobbery against them here.

IP6 would be nice, but the HE broker has been 100% stable for me for years, and having the tunnelling done on the router, the internal network is effectively native ipv6. My first ip6 hop is only 15ms.

Don't let Google dox me on Lumen Database, nameless man begs

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: @onefang Solicitors from London law firm Pinsent Masons

Wow. I hope you still get paid whatever compensation you would normally get paid.

Anyway, a handy tip for avoiding jury service in the future!

As an aside, in my clubbing days, there was this really cooled chilled out nightclub in Mumbles village, that sorta had an "inverse dress code" - well, not literally, but generally most guys were there in casual jeans, or even shorts and sandals (me!) .

In the clubs in nearby Swansea city, you invariably had the groups of people "smartly dressed" who invariably started fights... The sort who's only other chance to wear a suit is at their court hearing :-)

If they had been kicked out of too many clubs they'd often 'spill over' to Mumbles, and would be refused entry because they were most likely the "smartly dressed thugs".

I was working in London shortly afterwards, and I told a mate there, who didn't believe me.. We visited back home once, and went down Mumbles, and even his casual clothes appeared too formal, and he was only allowed in after I vouched for him!

Jamie Jones Silver badge

@onefang Re: Solicitors from London law firm Pinsent Masons

I agree totally.. Often those who "dress to impress" are doing so to hide the fact they haven't got much talent.. I see three of these people are your downvoters :-)

Anon man suing Google wants crim conviction to be forgotten

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: blogsite

"You say 'prurient clickbait', I say 'surprisingly well-written news reports obviously produced by someone with a background in criminal court reporting for a news agency'.

Either that or it's entirely fictional, hard to tell with it being anonymous."

Hmmmm, are you admitting to a bit of blogging on the side? !

Spies still super upset they can't get at your encrypted comms data

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Happy

Re: Meetings on a desolate beach

Doh! Of course!

Hark at me - always being negative! :-)

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Meetings on a desolate beach

You know, if I decide to go to some random beach with mini-me, to discuss taking over the world, should the governments ban beach going?

Technology has made it far easier for them to track people in general - they want to still have that cake after eating it

Security bods: Android system broadcasts enable user tracking

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Stop

I posted how anyone could do this, 3 months ago.

I posted the proof-of-concept that this could be done on this very web site (up to version 5.1 at least) a few months ago, but got no response.

Can I have a belated "scoop" article written please? :-)

https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/3520637 (ish) (2 posts)

Apologies for the tone, I was responding to a trolling tosser!

VMware 'pressured' hotel to shut down tech event close to VMworld, IGEL sues resort giant

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Convention contracts

StheD & Cirby, thanks for the replies. I am not l lawyer, and have had no dealings with event bookings from either side, so would have to bow to your experience.

However, as a layman, I'd have thought JohnFen was spot on. If the restaurant aren't privvy to the details of hotel contracts that can effect bookings they are allowed to make, then they damn well should be.

If the restaurant then makes a booking, and - as in this case - it turns out they shouldn't have, how can IGEL be to blame?

As I see it, when the events unfolded, they should have continued to honour their contract with IGEL, leaving vmware to demand compensation from the hotel for any failure to provide what was contracted.

I see it as the hotel totally screwing up here (after all, it's them that forced the restaurants actions) - they should have sucked it up, and dealt with any fallout that occurred. Kicking IGEL out mid-flow like that is just not on. - It makes IGEL out to be some sort of unreliable company that can't organise an event, and/or isn't a reliable payer. I think they are therefore fully justified to sue for losses, and damages to their reputation.

I certainly wouldn't now trust this venue to hold any event I was responsible for.

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Convention contracts

Cirby, so if that's the case, shouldn't the restaurant have refused the booking in the first place? They didn't know? Sounds like it's their problem.

The way you describe it makes it sound like IGEL booked a peppa-pig convention, then secretly revealed their true selves at the last minute!

Xeon-bashing Tachyum claims its Prodigy CPU will run AI jobs as well as traditional apps

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Happy

Can I donate via your kickstarter?

Android data slurping measured and monitored

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: 'The nature of some data may also surprise. App developers receive your age and gender'

> an ancient Symbian Nokia

Me too! I actually bought a "new" one after i'd learnt for myself all the shite that is slurped from android (and it'd not just google - most of the third party app suppliers are bad too)

Bonus? The battery last a week, the phone can be easily dialed in the dark and the rain, it's not as hard to hold as a "slate", and I don't have to worry about things slowing down because youtube decides to launch in the background.

Yep, I'll keep my android hacking to the comfort of my armchair.

Whilst I'm ranting about the horrible shape of all mobiles these days, I wonder, what happened to HCI? Why has user interface gone from practical to fashionable?

A few months ago, I splashed out a few hundred on a high specced android tablet... it's so thin that after a while it digs into your hands a bit, and the edgeless screen means my fingers keep drifting into pressing something I don't want to press... For non-intensive use, I literally use my old £40 tablet more often, because, well, borders, and more rounded sides.

pffft.

Redis has a license to kill: Open-source database maker takes some code proprietary

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Happy

Re: Jolly Good Journalism, El Reg.

"And it's the internet, so whichever one you chose someone will probably tell you you're wrong. :)"

No! Youre wrong! :-)

Fire chief says Verizon throttled department's data in the middle of massive Cali wildfires

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Verizon: "We Can"

"Don't blame net neutrality for this. Even with Obaka's stupid FCC regs in place, Verizon could STILL throttle bandwidth if you went over your plan's data cap.

Stop it Bob. You're better than that.

Yes, nothing to do with net neutrality, and yes, the same thing could have occured under net neutrality.

Why couldn't you have just said that instead of getting all partisan?

But as you raise the issue, the mind still boggles to how republicans can equate rules that say "ISPs cannot arse around with your internet traffic" with "government controlling our internet" - I suppose its' bloody commies... Oh no, you're best buds with them now... Errm. bloody Muslims.

Use Debian? Want Intel's latest CPU patch? Small print sparks big problem

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Throw the license in the bin

"The microcode is necessary to make the device you have already bought work better."

Even worse, the microcode update is necessary to make the device you have already bought work properly!

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Shrug

heretic!

Apple shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, to find gambling in its Chinese App Store

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Sensor its service?

Being psychic, I sense your censure censor sensors

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Confusopoly

Product codes.... not helped by certain large retailers giving unique model numbers to items they sell, so they can use the "if you see the same model elsewhere for cheaper, we'll refund the difference" line without being bitten:

Quote: http://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/2012/02/thinking-of-shopping-at-brighthouse-stop-dont.html

Brighthouse is selling this glossy-black Hoover model, pictured, for a cash price of £703.29. I reckon I found the identical model, with exactly the same specifications but with a white paint finish, being sold online for £469.Correct washing machine catalogue

Could I be 100% certain they were the same? No - because Brighthouse, of course, magics its own unique codes out of thin air, rather than use the standard Hoover codes other retailers cite.

What do a meth, coke, molly, heroin stash and Vegas allegedly have in common? Broadcom cofounder Henry Nicolas

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Some stories are just stories

"Aircraft oxygen masks only have 5-10 minutes worth (even pilot ones). They're simply there to get from high altitudes to below 10,000 feet without losing conciousness"

..... at which point, they are no longer relying on air from inside the plane....

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Not very flattering pictures

Usually it depends how rich they are, what neighbourhood they come from, and their skin colour.

Editing post seems permitted if system clock is set back

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Editing post seems permitted if system clock is set back

... It's ever since they switched to that annoying javascript bling that manipulates the date locally.

Annoying 'edit-post' bug

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Mushroom

POST EDIT bug (#2)

If you edit a post to change it to an anonymous post, it accepts the change, but doesn't actually action it... Presumably the other way around, too, but I didn't test that.

Also, this one still not been answered: https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2018/06/08/Jamie_Jones_Annoying_editpost_bug/

AC enumeration

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: How about a slight wrinkle in this plan?

- Yay to different words instead of anon + number.

- Yay to proper threading

- Yay to automatically timstamping the reply (Incidentally, the full date/time is now available if you disable javascript)

For all the excitement, Pie may be Android's most minimal makeover yet – thankfully

Jamie Jones Silver badge

"I've been told the ADB backup system is not that reliable, not compatible with many devices, "

Fair enough - it's not something I've used much.

Incidentally, I don't know why you got the downvotes - especially as no-one posted their reasons...

cheers

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: first rule of down votes

"Don't mention down votes!"

:-)

I knew it was inevitable, but my curiosity took the better of me, and I thought the commantards were better than the youtube comment trolls!

All I did was answer a question. There was no opinion stated. If someone thought my answer was wrong, why not say so?

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Trollface

Re: can't compete with a much more up-to-date platform, iOS

twats!

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: can't compete with a much more up-to-date platform, iOS

Nice to see I have some groupies!

I'm mildly curious why I got 2 downvotes for answering a question.. Still, if it makes you happy, fire away!

Jamie Jones Silver badge

You have been able to backup most things via adb since android 4.0.

Backup and restore commands Description

backup [-f file] [-apk | -noapk] [-obb | -noobb] [-shared | -noshared] [-all] [-system | [-nosystem] package_names Write an archive of the device's data to file. If you do not specify a file name, the default file is backup.adb. The package list is optional when you specify the -all and -shared options. The following describes the usages for the other options:

-apk | -noapk: Back up or do not back up .apk files. The default value is -noapk.

-obb | -noobb: Back up or do not back up .obb files. The default value is -noobb.

-shared | -noshared: Back up or do not back up shared storage. The default value is -noshared.

-all: Back up all installed apps.

-system | -nosystem: Include or do not include system apps when backing up all installed apps (-all). The default value is -system.

restore file Restore the device contents from file.

More:

command line: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40202829/adb-backup-unknown-backup-flag

https://9to5google.com/2017/11/04/how-to-backup-restore-android-device-data-android-basics/

gui front end: https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=36499906#post36499906

Improvements to ADB in android 8: https://www.xda-developers.com/android-oreo-adb-backup-better/

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: can't compete with a much more up-to-date platform, iOS

Actual applications that are part of open-source Android, or all the proprietary stuff that Google have tied to it to make it almost impossible for the average Joe to use Android without having their data harvested?

Both.

E.g. Webview (open - https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/android-9.0.0_r3/core/java/android/webkit/)

play/gms (propretary)

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: can't compete with a much more up-to-date platform, iOS

It bugs me when people downvote without saying why.

I'm not too sure about Ios, but you're right about android - some google apps are installed as user apps and are updated through the play store in the normal way - others, which may be preinstalled as system apps, can also update through the play store - the new version will be stored in "user" rather than "system" space, but will automatically be treated the same as the version it's updating. (the "system" copy will still exist, but will be ignored, until you delete the "user" update)

Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!

Jamie Jones Silver badge

5 days or 5 weeks?

The letter says the kid was out of school for 5 weeks, not 5 days...

IPv6: It's only NAT-ural that network nerds are dragging their feet...

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Trollface

Re: "the world is clinging stubbornly to IPv4"

Psst. There is this dark and evil technology out there that allows you to use a NAT router on IPv6. It's got a funny name that starts with an L and it's not unix.

Naaa, FreeBSD begins with an "F", and pfsense begins with a "p" !

Oi, clickbait cop bot, jam this in your neural net: Hot new AI threatens to DESTROY web journos

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Coat

Re: Easy source.

That's nothing. I lost 99kg in 1 minute. I shot the mother-in-law.

I went on this new "28 day diet".. All I lost was 4 weeks....

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Windows

Re: Easy source.

"10 things you never knew about xxxxxx"

Argh, that really triggers my OCD. How the hell can they assume they know what I do or don't know on the subject!

</old git whinge>

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: I think I can define ClickBait as

@Not Sparticus, you make a great point about these sites showing up on supposedly "proper" sites - I think that's what annoyed me most about them - my guard was down somewhat.

And yeah, I suppose they think the pennies they earn are worth the reputation knock.... It certainly makes me think twice of a site that uses such click farms (though of course, I don't usually see them any more)

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: I think I can define ClickBait as

"Outbrain and tombola - sites I completely block in my firewall."

Until now I have never heard of those two sites. By the sound of it, hopefully I'll never hear about them again.

Arggh, despite Giovani giving the correct name, I cocked it up in my reply.

As he says, it's taboola not tombola

For completeness, here is my personally compiled list of similar clickbait sites. Of course, check them out before blocking them - some may be dead now, or may have cleaned up their act. More importantly, never trust random-person-on-internet-especially-when-hes-a-self-described-welsh-git!

# --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Kill these zones belonging to either deceptive ad companies, or crappy tacky 'content based'

# click-bait ad-servers, which generally link to a page that links to the link (along with

# others). They usually have a misleading sensationalist headline too. Kill them with fire!

.adhitz.com. domain

.adsmarket.com. domain

.adnxs.com. domain

.content.ad. domain

.content-ad.net. domain

.gravity.com. domain

.mgid.com. domain

.outbrain.com. domain

.zizu.xyz. domain .steepto.com. domain

.taboola.com. domain .tribalfusion.com. domain

.zergnet.com. domain

.revcontent.com. domain # This one even uses thumbnails of people irrelevant to the story! # --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: pot / kettle

Do it properly..... https://www.fca.org.uk/ppi/how-to-check

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: I think I can define ClickBait as

Ugh. Yes. Outbrain and tombola - sites I completely block in my firewall.

Total dregs of the internet.

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: Ah, but

My first hard-disk was 20Mb, the size of a planet, and took about 90 seconds to spin up. It was in an ICL / Three Rivers Perq 1 from 1979/1980 - lovely machine 1024x768 resolution raster (black and white), running a graphical window manager - 1Mb of RAM, 1Mb 8" floppies.... the best graphics tablet I've ever used....

Bear in mind this machine predated the 1K ZX81 ... And no, I didn't get it until 1991 - Manchester Uni flogging off old kit, for £50 - I do believe they were over £100,000 new!

Grad sends warning to manager: Be nice to our kit and it'll be nice to you

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Quite the opposite of being kind..

Not my boss, but this aricle did remind me of a time when I was a student, back in ... errr 1989ish.

I was in one of the computer rooms, and they had recently had a whole bunch of DECstations installed (lovely bit of kit, monitor the size of a planet)

I remember all sorts of warnings placed over the power switches and power points - people kept on switching the things off, despite the fact the machines were all part of the main vax cluster, and users were just users, so there was no proper shutdown invoked... but I digress.

Anyway, there was a girl in there who was reading some large document on the screen, and the screen-hibernate screensaver kicked on, and she asked for help, saying "I hadn't pressed any key or anything for ages then the whole thing just broke".

Realising what had happened, I walked over to it, and threatened the monitor, telling it that I was sick of it acting up, and that it better start working now, or there would be hell to pay etc. Of course, nothing happened so I ranted some more, and said "I give you 3 seconds..." (at this point the girl was looking at me like I was a nutter).. "THREE.... TWO.... ONE" . On "ONE" I thumped the table, right next to the mouse (which she hadn't been using) causing it to move just enough to trigger the screen powering back on.

"See? You just have to tell it who's boss" I said, as I walked away. I really hoped it would happen again, and she'd end up shouting at the monitor itself - alas it didn't, presumably she'd finished her reading and was now using the keyboard.

Yes, I was an annoying troll type of person back then too!

Sitting pretty in IPv4 land? Look, you're gonna have to talk to IPv6 at some stage

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: NAT

Steve and FIA, you're both right!

Steve, what you are describing is the "typical" fixed network setup - much the same as if in the IP4 world, you had a block of IP4 addresses allocated to you.

What FIA is remembering is IPv6-to-IPv6 Network Prefix Translation (NPTv6), which is more or less as he/she remembers, but is designed not as a solution for home networks (obviously, there are enough IPv6 addresses around where this isn't necessary.), but for portable networks, or networks which might change provider, and/or certain multihome situations. More reasons why this would be useful are in the first link:

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/documentation/71/pan-os/pan-os/networking/nptv6-overview

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6296.txt

But yeah, as Steve described, the general experience will be with a permanently static address range - NPTv6 would have more niche uses.

Jamie Jones Silver badge

(gosh, if only there was a technology that could perform Network Address Translation.... oh, no, sorry, some fools condemned all that because "IPv6 would fix it all"... all that stuff that's not actually broke...)

Wrong. IPv6 NAT exists, and is as easy as IPv4 NAT.

Just because some "fools" say you no longer need to NAT, you can if you want. Heck, there is also DHCP6 and IPv6 private-lan address ranges if you really want to stay old school and stick with ip4 type restrictions.

Please don't make stuff up to suit your argument, or call people fools because they understand the headaches NAT can cause. It makes you sound like Trump.

The internet's very own Muslim ban continues: DNS overlord insists it can freeze dot-words

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: A few issues

It's not the country domains that were the issue - it's about someone in Europe registering a .com/.org/.net etc - Nominet has not published names and addresses of individuals on whois for .uk domains for many years before GDPR. ICANN had no fight there.

Jamie Jones Silver badge
Happy

Point of information. That would just be a subdomain of of.islam

If you're going to be pedantic... Not necessarily.

Whilst subdomains are split on "." , the reverse isn't necessarily true: "." does not necessarily mean a subdomain split.

Why Google won't break a sweat about EU ruling

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Re: What I want (i.e. will pay for) in my smartphone OS

I understand what you're saying, but I'm not really seeing how that adds up to rooting being a "dirty word".

Well, I simply see having root access as belonging to me, as it's my device. I feel it's as natural as buying a house and not expecting the attic to be out of bounds.

The fact many companies (and users) consider "having root access" to be dodgy is my point.

"many apps will refuse to work"

Yes, which is a hand indicator that lets me avoid inadvertently supporting companies who take such unreasonable, anti-user stances.

I agree! I dumped netflix when they brought that in. I know they did it because of the media companies, but still, they are my only point of contact where I can make a protest. I could have jumped through hoops to get around it, but if I'm paying for a service that suddenly decides my TV is "not authorised" to receive said service, then said service is cancelled with extreme predudice.

I've been lucky so far, but what happens if my bank, or any vital services follow the same path?

My point, though, was therefore, these companies think root is a bad thing (otherwise "known as a dirty word")

"some companies say rooting voids guarantee"

Which, in my opinion, is actually understandable and not disparaging of root access.

I'm not saying this in a sarcastic or insulting way, so bare with me:

I consider a phone as a hardware device / computer. And that device runs software, like a desktop computer.

If I tinker with the hardware on my desktop machine in a not-supported manner, than fair enough - if I screw up or delete the OS, then I'd expect to pay to have it fixed (if I was unable to do it myself). If I arse around with the software and there's an unrelated hardware failure, I expect the guarantee to still hold.

The same with a phone - if a user fiddles using root, and causes a bootloop, they deserve to pay if they need it fixed.

If simply having root means that if the cpu breaks for any unrelated reason, I no longer have a guarantee, then I don't feel that is right (and I'd fight my corner it if it came down to it)

Cheers for the reply!

Sen. Ron Wyden: Adobe Flash is doomed, why is Uncle Sam still using it?

Jamie Jones Silver badge

Mind you, there’s a few nice South Africans these days.

And that's not bloody surprising, man!

Jamie Jones Silver badge

wave a chicken in the air

Kids....

Back in my day, there was no waving. We respectively held our chickens in the air, whilst sticking a deck-chair up our nose.

Of course, this was followed by the buying of a Jumbo Jet, and the burying of all our clothes - as was expected at the time.

On Android, US antitrust can go where nervous EU fears to tread

Jamie Jones Silver badge

I don't agree that Android consumers have it good - I find Android the least-bad of various fairly dreadful options, and still highly inferior to Symbian. (Sure, it's entertaining to open a "terminal" window on my phone and muck about in a shell with Busybox-supplied utilities, but not really very useful.)

I'm going to appear like a bit of a contradiction now when I say that I recently bought a 'new' old-nokia as my replacement phone, because I didn't want to have a phone depending on the android or apple bullshit.

At the same time, I generally use Android on my my desktop (as I am currently!) [ Current Desktop ]